Suicide in Foxconn, Apple’s external contractor
Foxconn is one of the biggest electronics manufacturers all over the world, holding more than 900,000 employees, which is also where eighteen people jumped from the building with fourteen deaths. The reasons are obvious, due to the extremely harsh working conditions. Employees work up to 16 hours a day, earning merely CNY 1200 ($200) per month, constantly suffering from managers’ verbal assaults and the company routinely violates local labor laws. All these behaviors are considered very unethical and even inhumanity. However, to be noticed, Foxconn is also the biggest external contractor of Apple Corporation, so Apple is somehow partially responsible for this tragic.
Every company is trying to cut down costs, especially for electronic manufacturers, who earn little margin for a large volume, so they survive by being efficient and cut down labor costs is crucial to Foxconn. On the other hand, according to Apple’s annual revenue report, it earned $40 billion revenue for this year. Since Apple has such a strong sale, it should be able to lift up the marginal profits for Foxconn and renegotiate necessary treatment for employee’s working condition in China. Also, whenever tragic happened Apple simply announced what their supervisors found out about which supplier was violating laws and Apple’s commitments for labor protection, without any penalties, which can be seen as laws without polices.
At last, in my opinion, although suicide tragedies happened in Foxconn in China, Apple is also responsible for indirectly causing the tradedies.
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